GENERAL BEYERS DROWNED.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 10 December 1914, Page 5

GENERAL BEYERS DROWNED.

GERMAN OUTRAGES AT DINANT. \. WELTER OF BLOOD. SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS' NEUTRALITY. PRETORIA, Dec. 9. Official.—lt is believed that General Beyers was drowned when crossing the Vaal River. AMSTERDAM, Dec. 9. The Telegraf publishes an eyewitness's account of the Dinant. outrage. The French, when evacuating the city, fired on the incoming Germans. The latter accused the townsfolk of firing. They placed 153 men on one side of the parade square, and the women and children on the other side, with a firing party between them. The scene was one of heart-rending agony, the women and children kneeling and supplicating, the German officers. The Germans fired, and the 153 men fell writhing in a welter of blood. Two were unhurt, and four slightly wounded. They pretended to be dead. An officer cried out that those able to rise must stand. Sis men rose. Another volley and the men fell. Then the officer ordered the machine-gunners to fire for some time upon the bodies, the women and children being meanwhile distracted with grief and terror.

.WASHINGTON, Dec. 9. Twenty representatives of the republics of Cenbial and South America met under Mr. Bryan's presidency, and agreed that, as the activities of belligerents in South American waters have already created considerable friction, they would appoint a commission, consisting of diplomats, to formulate practical steps, with a view to more vigorous assertion of neutral nations' responsibilities. The conference agreed that the form in which the operations of belligerents were developing rebounded to the injury of neutrals, be- | cause the i-espective rights of belliger-! ents and neutrals were not clearly defined. The proposed diplomatic Commission will report its findings to the Governing Board of the Pan-American Union,